On the last day of February (the 29th) in 1912, the Denver Post ran a roundup story of the month’s snowy weather records. Today, February 27, 2015, the city has a new record of 22.2″ of snowfall for the month, breaking that of 1912.

It’s fun to turn back the pages — and the clock– and enjoy the news coverage as if it was happening today.

Here’s the headline:

And the best of the 1912 story:

“All records for snowfall have been broken by the fall this month. Twenty-two and one-tenth inches have fallen during the month, the greatest fall ever recorded by the weather bureau since it began its present system of records, in 1885.

The greatest snowfall in twenty-four hours ever recorded also occurred this month between 6 p.m. February 23 and 6 p.m. February 24. On the evening of February 25 there was 12.8 inches of snow on the ground, which breaks still another record, the next greatest amount which the weather man can show in his books being 10 inches on February 23, 1909.

All railroad lines connecting Denver with the East and Southeast at 9 o’clock this morning were again open to traffic for the first time in four days. The Santa Fe was the last of the roads to overcome the snow blockades in Kansas. Denver passengers, who were aboard eight Santa Fe trains held up since Sunday at Dodge City and Kinsley, Kan., began arriving in the city this afternoon.

Twelve trains on the Santa Fe, all of which were blocked by snow in Kansas since last Sunday, passed through La Junta today. There was no suffering among passengers on blockaded trains as the company held trains at stations where there was an ample supply of food and where the passengers during their enforced stay were fed at the expense of the company. In some places in Kansas, according to reports brought to Denver, the tracks were buried under fifteen feet of snow.”

The story goes on to give the local transport picture:

“The local Tramway company was seriously troubled yesterday by snow drifts which were piled up on its lines by the high wind. Out on the Littleton line, the cars ran into drifts four feet deep. Today there was a series of accidents on the Aurora line which delayed the cars all morning and there was also trouble on the West Larimer line. The Globeville cars had to couple up to get through.”

The years around 1952 may have been the Golden Age of newspaper comic strips. Lots of comics have come and gone over the years and more will debut and sunset. But there is no doubt they are reader favorites.

Imagine the cartoonist, racking his or her brains for inspiration, day after day, week after week — creating comic strips is w-o-r-k! One of the best things about the photo above from the Denver Post archives is the cutline (caption) pasted on the back of it:

“FEB 10 1952, FEB 14 1952 It Beats Working – Cartoonists, who are really artists with their brains knocked loose, have the softest jobs in the world-all pay and no work. Here, three of the unusual breed look over “Rick Smith” comic strips fresh from the imagination factory owned by Hal Rayburn (left) and Kevin O’Toole (right). The Denver creators have shipped their sports comic strip hero to a New York syndicate, hoping to find a market for their brainchild. Bob Bowie (in back of them, center) Denver Post sports cartoonist, gets in on the act to see how the other half lives. Credit: The Denver Post David Mathias”

Copy editors were nothing if not comically disrespectful!

Comics and cartoons remain such popular features of daily newspaper pages that they are constantly evaluated.

Last month, an iconic figure in American popular culture died: Darrell Winfield, 85, of Wyoming. Most of us knew him as the Marlboro Man, the cigarette company’s noted advertising figure. He was one of several real Western cowboys who worked for the campaign.

In 1990, The Denver Post sent writer Jim Carrier in search of the Marlboro Man as a symbol of the West. He tracked down the cowboy models who posed as Marlboro Men. He visited ranches where the ads were shot and talked to ad execs and clothing manufacturers who helped create the image. He interviewed Westerners about their perception of the Marlboro Man and his impact on them and the West.

January 13, 1991, Page: 1-A
The Reporter, The Cowboy, The Myth
By Gil Spencer, DENVER POST

For six months, through the pure West, reporter Jim Carrier searched for Marlboro Men, those lean riders who stared down from billboards and sold a billion cigarettes.

He also searched for cowboys who had never been within roping distance of the Marlboro campaign, but who had the look and style that gave us Shane, Wayne and those endless shoot-‘em-ups that added to the myth of the Old West.

While he was at it, Carrier couldn’t help comparing himself to the leathery subjects of the piece he was about to write, to the “beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” gun-quick western hero typified by Gary Cooper. How did Carrier stack up? Not bad at all. They ride. He writes.

Carrier was shadowed by photographer Brian Brainerd. Judge his pictures for yourself. There’s an editor hereabouts who thinks many of them could hang in the Louvre.

This was not written for a paper in, say, Boston – although there are Bostonians who would have no trouble identifying the line: “Take ‘em to Missouri, Matt.”

Jim Carrier’s story was written for a paper in Denver, Colorado, within buckboard distance of Marlboro Country and the lingering echoes of the Old West.

A search for Marlboro Men and for a mythic cowhand was a Carrier idea that made exquisite sense in Colorado and anywhere else in the West, for that matter.

Now all Carrier had to do was drive thousands of miles and interview ranchers, cowboys, ad agency specialists, women who were tougher than men, men who were tougher than men, several
in-the-flesh Marlboro Men, including a gay Marlboro Man, while paying his respects to enough horses, mules and cattle to supply the National Western Stock Show forever.

He’s back. The story’s done, all eight parts. And he’s still breathing.

The entire eight-part series can be found on microfilm at the Central Denver Public Library (January 13-16 and 24-27, 1991) or can be read in part, here (text only) on Newsbank’s America’s Newspapers, available under the Research tab of the Denver Public Library’s website.

Colorado has had African-American pioneers on many fronts, but none more so than Dr. Bernard F. Gipson, Sr., who was a medical doctor with a long career of service. He was the state’s first black board-certified surgeon, a diplomate of the American Board of Surgery.

Gipson completed pre-med studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then enrolled at Howard University College of Medicine. His internship was at Harlem Hospital in New York with a surgical residency at Howard University Freedman’s Hospital and at the U.S. Public Health Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Gipson and his wife Ernestine arrived in Colorado in 1954 when, as a U.S. Air Force captain, he took up his assignment at Lowry Air Force Base as chief of surgery. Following his discharge in 1956, he set up a private practice that was active until he retired in 1995.

He also served 25 years as a clinical associate professor of surgery at the former University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

On January 27, 1945, the advancing Russians overran a Nazi concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland.

In the German language, it is known as Auschwitz.

The camp’s liberation 70 years ago marked the final months of World War II in Europe and the end of the Nazis’ effort to eliminate Jews and other ‘undesirables’ in such death camps. More prisoners were freed as the Allied armies swooped upon the German homelands and discovered other detention camps. But Auschwitz was the largest such prison, where 1.5 million people lost their lives.

There are many grim photographs in news archives such as The Denver Post’s. These few photos show readers only a little of Auschwitz and its terrible history.

Auschwitz railway station, 1944

In the photo above taken by a Nazi SS officer, prisoners arrive at the railway station at Auschwitz, where they are sorted into groups who will work as slave laborers and those who will die immediately. Below, a woman and several children make their way as ordered.

F.O. Stanley – Inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile and builder of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

[media-credit id=471 align=”aligncenter” width=”475″][/media-credit]

A group of supporters of the final legislation which established Rocky Mountain National Park on January 26, 1915, pose for the camera during dedication ceremonies Sept. 4, 1915. Foreground, from left: Enos Mills, F.O. Stanley, Congressman Ed Taylor, Mrs. John Sherman, and Gov. George A. Carlson.

On August 28, 1963, a massive gathering of about 250,000 peaceful marchers gathered on The Mall of Washington, D.C. to make a point to the U.S. that jobs and freedom were the rights of everyone. African-Americans and civil rights supporters listened to community leaders make moving speeches on the importance of honoring the civil rights of all citizens.

In 1986, The Denver Post invited its readers to share some Christmas memories. The stories submitted were sweet and funny, or sad and memorable, but all were touching in the way one might see a family scene through a window at twilight.

One story was sent in by reader Julia Tapia, age 70, of Denver. The Post ran a photo of her with her sister, Mela Solano (at right in photo above), with whom she baked empanadas each year as their family tradition.

Here is Julia’s Christmas memory:

“I don’t remember doing much for Christmas until the year I turned 7. It was 1923 and we lived in Vaughn, a small town in New Mexico where children didn’t know about things like Santa Claus.
Spanish families has different customs in those times.

“All that changed one evening in early December. My mother was cooking the evening meal over an old pot-bellied stove when my father came home from his job as a laborer for the railroad.

“He changed into a freshly starched shirt and tugged on his familiar, dark suspenders. Then, he joined us children. We were five then: my brother Jake was 11, Frances was 9, I was 7, Mela was 5 and Emma was 3. I remember my father’s face that night. He looked tired from the day’s work, but his eyes twinkled as if he had a secret he couldn’t wait to tell.

“After dinner, he got out the Montgomery Ward catalog that my mother used to order material for our clothes. She made them without a pattern by cutting the cloth while she looked at the pictures. But on this night, my father didn’t look at cloth. He turned to the toy section and said we’d better put in our order to Santa Claus.

“Well, we didn’t even know who Santa Claus was! There was no radio or television in those days to tell children he would come on Christmas if they were good. My father told us Santa Claus would come down the chimney of the stove on Christmas Eve and leave us presents. I remember how we all sat at the kitchen table looking at that catalog.

“Oh, there were so many beautiful things to choose from! Jake wanted a play farm set and Frances asked for a sewing kit because she liked to embroider. My two younger sisters wanted the same dolls.

“But I saw this beautiful porcelain doll with jointed hands and curly brown hair. She even had green eyes made of real marbles that closed so she could sleep. I always wished I had light eyes like my mother’s, which were hazel. Bue mine are dark brown. So, the minute I saw that doll, I knew I wanted her and nothing else.

…

“Christmas Eve finally came and we had to keep our own traditions. Because Vaughn was so small, the priest only came once a month, so we couldn’t go to midnight Mass like we do today. But my mother sang Noche de Paz (‘Silent Night’) in our living room and we all joined in as we bundled up to go ask for oremos (an old custom where children go door to door singing in exchange for treats).

“Later we made empanadas (stuffed pastries). My father would bring home the coal and the meat and in those days you didn’t have oil, so we had to use lard. My job was grinding the beef tongue for the filling.

“After we finished, all the girls put on new flannel nightgowns my mother had made for us. We were so tired from the excitement, but we giggled and worried about whether Santa Claus would really come. We tried to stay awake and wait for him. But then morning came and we’d been sleeping and missed him.

“We ran to the living room and saw that what my father told us was true: Santa had come in the night!

“And there was my beautiful doll!

“When I think about my father and how he brought us Santa Claus, I feel so much love for him, just remembering these things and knowing how wonderful he tried to make our childhood.”

The Denver Post story, which ran on December 21, 1986, went on to note:

Julia Tapia, a widow and parishioner at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, has four children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She moved to Denver in 1944 and was a domestic worker for 25 years. She still makes empanadas for Christmas.

One day in 1947, a young and virtually unknown artist arrived at the Denver Post. He showed some of his watercolors to the staff of the art department. The staff recognized a big talent when it saw one, and the delicate, desert-hued colors of the paintings were immediately featured in The Denver Post.

Navajo artist Harrison Begay, 29, had arrived, all right, and he was on his way to the big time. Begay was to become one of the most noted artists of his generation.

The painting at top, done “expressly for publication in THE POST,” as the accompanying story pointed out, was selected for its themes and beautiful colors, all the better shown off in The Post’s rotogravure pages.

It was signed, of course:

Post writers were taken with the young artist, who they learned had been born in Greasewood Springs, Arizona in 1917 and had begun drawing with pencil and charcoal as a child.

They also learned he was a battle-hardened veteran of the Normandy beachhead and other World War II campaigns in Europe. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Iceland, England, France and Czechoslovakia before his honorable discharge in 1945. He returned home to Santa Fe and then came to Denver to enroll in a radio technician’s school. Even though he hadn’t painted during his years in Europe (there was a war on, remember?), Begay took up his paintbrushes once again and turned his eye to the things he loved best, the Navajo people and animals of the Southwest.

Harrison Begay at The Denver Post in 1947.

“With considerable pride, The Post presents to its readers the work of this young artist…”

And so his paintings were published. These, even seen in black & white, have an elegance to them that became one of Harrison Begay’s hallmarks.

The work of Harrison Begay.

The buffalo hunt.

Riders.

At one time, he had been a student of Dorothy Dunn of the Santa Fe Indian School, but was largely self-taught. Today, his paintings can be worth thousands of dollars.

The candles are lit. The wine is poured. The Thanksgiving guests are happily assembled at table.

The main event is about to arrive. But oh, the stress of carving him up properly! Forget watching an online video and hark back to 1992, when the Denver Post helpfully offered the graphic above to assist turkey carvers everywhere. Looks easy, doesn’t it?

As a further aid to your holiday prep, try this simple Pecan-Rice Stuffing dish that can be made without butter (by using a butter substitute or oil) to satisfy vegetarians and vegans in the family:

Pecan-Rice Turkey Stuffing

Our own food editor, Helen Dollaghan trotted these very items out in November, 1992 as a Southern twist on the usual holiday fare. She credited their adaptation from a book called, “Gourmet’s Holidays and Celebrations” (Random House; $25 — in 1992).

Here is her offering for Turkey-giblet Tabasco Gravy, which Helen advised “is especially compatible with the rice stuffing:”

Turkey-Giblet Tabasco Gravy

Long-time cooks and readers of The Denver Post inevitably think of Helen Dollaghan on holidays. Her recipes and food columns were avidly read by cooks all over the state. We get requests today for many of her recipes.